


Shield-bearers

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Justice League (2017), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 07:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15456420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Everyone said it was the serum. That kind of made sense, if he looked at it sideways, but he was under that water, in that ice, for sixty years. Doctor Erskine promised big things of the serum, but nothing like that. Endurance, strength, speed, health, but not fuckingimmortality.





	Shield-bearers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprayofstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprayofstars/gifts).



The world of men is strange, and stranger in this than in anything else.

Themyscira is not an island of breeding women - indeed, Diana is the only child born to an Amazon ever, so far as she knows, and she was formed not from her mother’s womb but from the earth itself, and Zeus’ breath. She has no way of knowing what is ahead of her, no anecdotes shared over meals, no laughter spread around campfires.

Instead, she has a swelling belly, and she has her friends.

Sameer finds her a nurse, a slight woman with fair hair and steady hands, and Diana clasps those steady hands in her own and begs help. She has Sameer and Charlie and Chief and Etta, Etta maybe most of all, at her back, and she loves them all for it. She does. But she cannot help but wish for fierce Antiope, for gentle Hippolyta, for any of her aunts and sisters and friends.

Sarah Rogers, who came from Ireland to be a nurse in London and eloped with an American soldier somewhere along the way, squeezes tight to Diana’s fingers and says, “Whatever you need, Mrs. Trevor.” 

 

**I.**

 

Steve couldn’t properly remember a time when he wasn’t sick, but the first clear memory he had of  _ being  _ sick was a nasty one. He’d been about six, and he’d spent what felt like a week laid across his ma’s lap, coughing phlegm into a bucket by the fire. She’d been burning something herbal the doctors had given her to clear his lungs, or maybe the little old woman with the weird shop down on the corner by Bucky’s grandma’s place had given it to her. He didn’t remember, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it made his eyes sting and his chest ache, and even his ma’s careful hands and quiet singing hadn’t helped the pain.

His chest had always been weak, and he wondered if maybe the herbals and the cigarettes the doctors kept pushing into his hand every time he drummed up enough cash to make a call were doing any good. Bucky was sceptical, said that the doctors were just lazy, that they’d have to actually put in a little work if they stopped telling Steve his wheeze was all in his head, but Bucky loved new science so much that he wasted money on the shows that bigwigs like Howard Stark liked to put on, so what did he know. 

Steve didn’t think Howard Stark would ever give a shit about his weak chest or his brittle bones, and so he very firmly didn’t give a shit about Howard Stark in return. 

It was easier to just think in small steps. Earn just enough money to buy real meat from the butcher, and then he could make good beef stew. If he portioned it out, he’d have it for a week, and that would mean he’d be a little stronger, so he’d be able to work more. That’d mean more money, which would mean he’d be able to afford… He didn’t know what. But there had to be something better that the doctors could give him, right?

Some of the pulp printers had shown more interest in his artwork, which was good, because it was money without having to risk making himself sick again. It wasn’t  _ great  _ money, though, and that was what he needed right now. 

Because if the doctors here at the recruitment centre at Howard Stark’s show had just caught Steve out for lying on his enlistment form again, he’d have to get out of here real fast, and maybe even move out of his apartment, if they came looking for him.

* * *

 

 

When Steve died, Diana decided never to love so specifically - or so quickly - ever again. How could she ever risk such terrible heartache again? Better to share her love out amongst all those of the world of men who needed it, and have her pain lessened by how thinly spread it would be.

But then, on a bright July afternoon in a small, neat apartment in New York City, Diana wakes up from the hardest labour of her life and Sarah lays a tiny, softly whimpering bundle in her arms - so small! She had not known that babies were so small! Diana’s heart catches fire, because she has  _ never  _ loved anyone like she does her son.

“He’s not a big one,” Sarah says, smiling as though that will mask the concern on her narrow face. “And he’s quiet, but every baby is different.”

Diana puts her son,  _ Steve’s  _ son, to her breast. He does not begin to nurse, and Sarah sighs. 

“I was afraid of this,” she says, and she takes Diana’s son away, resting him easily in the crook of her elbow. “Little things like him often can’t take the teat, so I sent Sameer out to do some foraging for me.”

The results of Sameer’s foraging are a large tin, a long glass bottle, and a curious rubber thing that apparently fits over the top of the bottle.

“Saved hundreds of babies, the rubber nipple has,” Sarah says over her shoulder, bouncing very slightly as she sets the rubber thing to Diana’s son’s mouth. Diana is so relieved to see him give suck that she might cry, and she does not dare to ask what it is that is in the tin, which Sarah mixed with milk before putting into the bottle. “And baby formula is a godsend, for mother’s that can’t nurse.”

Diana hesitates for a long moment before offering up a prayer of thanks to Hera - she is one of Zeus’ innumerable bastards, after all, and has only just slaughtered Hera’s favourite son. Will the Queen of Olympus even accept her thanks? She cannot be sure. It cannot hurt to offer it either way. 

She offers a prayer to Hestia as well, just in case. The hearthkeeper knows better than anyone else about providing for the hungry, doesn’t she?

“What do you intend to do to support yourselves?” Sarah asks, somehow fitting Steve’s son back into Diana’s arms and then offering her the bottle. “I understand that you don’t have much of a family waiting for you, Mrs. Trevor, and from what Sameer and the boys have said, they’re the closest your husband had to a family. So you’ll be needing some kind of work, I suppose, to keep a roof over the wee man’s head.”

Sarah Rogers’ husband will not be coming home from the war. Diana overheard Sarah weeping last week, and Charlie had whispered the ill tidings to her over breakfast the following morning. War, it seems, has made widows of them both, and there is a sisterhood of sorts in that. 

But work? Diana does not know how her skills might be turned to work in the world of men.

 

**III.**

 

Steve should have died when his plane hit the water. 

Or, if not then, he should have died when he drowned. Or when he froze. Or when his body ran out of fuel. Or when he ran out of water. Radiation poisoning. Probably there should’ve been some sort of penetrating stab wound from when the plane started breaking up. There were so many ways he should have died, but he didn’t.

Everyone said it was the serum. That kind of made sense, if he looked at it sideways, but he was under that water, in that ice, for  _ sixty years.  _ Doctor Erskine promised big things of the serum, but nothing like that. Endurance, strength, speed, health, but not fucking  _ immortality. _

This brave new world was nothing like he’d expected of the future he’d never thought to see. Howard’s flying cars had failed to materialise, which he suspected would’ve pissed Howard the hell off it he hadn’t been dead and gone, there still weren’t as many ladies in command as Peggy would’ve liked, and there were still  _ poor  _ parts of town.

That really pissed him off. There’d always been a hope that in the future, there’d be medicine for everything, food for everyone, shelter and safety for anyone who needed it. There’d been a hope, with the New Deal, that Lady Liberty’s promises might finally come true. Steve had always been sceptical, but it was still shit to see that scepticism proved right.

He laid flowers on his ma’s grave, after he’d pulled all the weeds and cleared the headstone. His pa’s name was on there too, and Steve prayed for him a little once he was done praying for his ma. Not that he’d ever known Joe Rogers as anything more than a wistful story from his ma, but it felt wrong not to acknowledge his pa at least a little.

He slipped up to Washington Cemetery and left flowers for Bucky’s folks as well. Seemed the right thing to do. 

And then, he was called up. Three fucking days back in the world, and there was already someone trying to end it again. 

 

* * *

The third time someone tries to harm Diana’s son, it is just before the second winter solstice after his birth, and it is one of Circe’s own sons who kicks down her door.

“You should feel honoured, warrior,” Telegonus says, brandishing his sword as though she should be afraid of him - she who has faced Ares himself! She who has the most precious thing in the world to protect! “My mother considers few worthy of my wrath.”

Diana is unimpressed by his wrath, but impresses her own upon him with sword and lasso and shield, and then she cradles her screaming son to her breast as Telegonus twitches the rest of his way to Asphodel on the floor.

Charlie and Sameer come when she sends a boy for them, and Charlie bounces her son and sings to him while she and Sameer deal with what is left of her enemy.

She also sends for Sarah. She has an impossible favour to ask, and cannot think of anyone else equal to the task.

 

**VI.**

 

Steve understood Thor, mostly. He thought he did, anyway, and Thor sure as hell seemed more at ease with him than with Tony or Bruce or Nat or Clint.

But Steve got it. He understood what it was to have that kind of weight on your shoulders - maybe his wasn’t as explicit as Thor’s, and he hadn’t borne it for as long, but his shield meant as much to people as Thor’s hammer did, in its own way.

“Tell me, Steve,” Thor said in that bracing tone that would’ve sounded dumb on anyone else. “What is it you seek, in this second life you’ve been given?”

No one else had thought to ask. Thor was different, though, and always thought to ask questions that seemed obvious only in hindsight. 

“Some peace and quiet might be nice,” Steve said, grinning at Thor’s huff of agreeable laughter. “I don’t know, Thor. I haven’t really had a chance to think about it.”

He’d’ve maybe liked to go back to school. Study illustration. He’d’ve liked to find the families the Howlies left behind. Find Becky Barnes, any kids and grandkids she had. He wanted to dig in his heels and insist on being let live in Brooklyn, instead of whatever fancy new digs in DC Fury had been hinting at in that last meeting. He wanted to try all the new candy, and he wanted to ride the Cyclone again, and he wanted to sit in a quiet room and cry for a solid week for everything he’d left behind.

It might have been sixty years to everyone else, but it had only been three weeks since Peggy had talked him to the end as far as Steve was concerned.

“I’d like to help,” he said at last. Thor had let him wallow in contemplative silence for a good ten minutes, and didn’t seem even a little put out. Steve kind of loved him for that. “But I don’t know what that means anymore.”

 

* * *

Sarah could pass for the baby’s mother, Diana thinks, and the part of her that isn’t sick with gratitude is sick with jealousy.

“I’ll love him as if he were my very own,” Sarah says, brushing Diana’s son’s tufty hair back from his sleeping face with soft fingers. “You’re sure about this, Diana?”

“I have no choice,” she says quietly, because it is true. Nothing could tear her away from her son, were it not for the fact that her very presence draws danger to him. She could not bear to see him harmed, not for anything, and so she must not see him at all.

Circe and Hecate do not approve of there being an Amazon in the world of men. They are making that  _ very  _ apparent. Diana’s son is fragile even by the standards of mortal infants, and she cannot risk him further. Not like this.

“This is our last goodbye, then,” Sarah says in that knowing way of hers. That was what had drawn Diana to her first, that gentle face and gentler way, kind and unquestioning. 

She will be a wonderful mother to Diana’s son. There is no other way.

“His name is Steve,” Diana says, “and he likes it when you sing to him. But his hearing is better on the right.” She hesitates, fingertips pressed to Steve’s warm little head. “You will love him?”

“I promise you that on my husband’s soul,” Sarah says, and her soft blue eyes are full of tears. Diana does not dare cry, for if she begins, she will never cease. “As if he were my own, Diana. I promise.”

 

**II.**

 

Steve stepped into a metal coffin, and no one really expected him to step out.

He did, though. Peggy kept ogling him on the sly, and Howard couldn’t seem to believe his luck that Steve hadn’t died.

Steve bought a bottle of schnapps and poured it over the fire Howard made of Professor Erskine’s notes. It seemed a fitting tribute.

He took to sketching again. It was the only way to fill the long stretches of time between medical assessments, and the only way to stop his brain from screaming in the long days between USO shows. 

He  _ hated  _ the shows. The attention was kind of nice, and the girls were all swell, but the shows felt hollow. Felt like a sham. He could’ve been out on the front, fighting alongside Bucky, and he felt like he was cheating by doing this instead.

The long hours sketching give him time to think. Time to remember, too. Steve spent a lot of time with Doctor Erskine, they all did, but Steve was the only one who paid attention.

He remembered the doc’s notes. Better than anyone else ever would, now that him and Howard had destroyed all the important bits. He knew what was supposed to happen in that coffin, and it wasn’t  _ this. _

Stronger, faster, healthier, sure - but the height? The tan? The perfect skin? That was unexpected. Doc Erskine had said that the serum would bring out whatever was inside Steve’s heart, but Steve wasn’t sure how he could’ve had a six-two bombshell with arms like a metalworker in his heart.

He wasn’t going to object, of course. Sure made life a lot easier, to be tall and good looking and able to breathe properly. Made him wonder if things had been like this for Buck, too, or if being Jewish had been just as much a handicap as having shit for lungs. But he did think it was bullshit, him being kept on stage like a performing monkey, while normal guys like Bucky were being sent up against guns and God knew what.

 

* * *

Diana keeps her promise to Sarah for over a decade, and then she can ignore the pull no longer. No monsters will have troubled her son in that time - Sarah had means to contact her if they had - but she must see for herself, just in case.

But Sarah is gone. When Diana asks the neighbours of the tiny apartment Sarah was reduced to - why did she not ask for help? Surely she knew Diana would have gladly given it? - they tell her Sarah has died, consumption they think, or maybe TB, and well, that boy of hers is a man now, how’re they to know where he might’ve gone?

Diana goes to Sameer. She goes to Charlie. She even goes to Chief, although he did not linger in New York as the others did.

But no one can find her son. It is as though he followed his foster-mother to the grave.

**V.**

 

“A shield-bearer!” Thor cried in delight, spinning his hammer through another half dozen aliens like it was nothing. Steve’s ribs were cracked and slow - for him - to heal, and he felt like a fucking asthmatic all over again. “I have not seen many of your kind in Midgard!”

“Don’t know anyone else crazy enough to bring a shield to a gunfight,” Natasha called over her shoulder, bounding up over a crashed car to drive one of the aliens’ own spears deep through the shoulder of one of the nasty things. 

Steve rolled his eyes, rolled his shoulders, and turned back to the fight as Thor took off into the sky again. Natasha was a good partner, fast enough to keep up with Steve and smart enough to cover him when he was busy. He liked working with her and Thor, and Clint was the best damned sniper he’d ever seen. 

Tony terrified him. Far more than Doctor Banner, who was just the other side of Steve’s coin and suffering for it. But Tony, well.  _ Tony.  _ The suit was so powerful, and Tony had so much of Howard in him… Thank God he’d turned all that brain to good, was all Steve could say.

Then an alien spat at him, and he didn’t say anything much else for a while.

 

* * *

Bruce looks at Diana with a slack jaw. She’s never seen him quite so bamboozled, but this seems to have done it.

“What records have you found?” she asks, because his searches are so much more thorough that any she’s been able to run in recent years. 

“See for yourself,” he says, leaning into her just a little when she rests her hand on his shoulder. She isn’t sure what she thinks of that, so she puts it aside to consider later-

“Oh my,” she says, because the two pictures on the screen before her don’t make sense. She can see her nose, her mother’s eyes, Antiope’s tense jaw, and Steve’s hair, but that doesn’t make sense. Well, it does on the slight, small man on the left, who seems the right kind of delicate for her son as a man. 

But the warrior on the right? How can both men meet all the same criteria?

“Diana,” Bruce says, sounding betrayed. “How did you forget to mention that your son is  _ Captain America?” _

 

 

**IV.**

 

There were apparently heaps of aliens now. Tons of them. SHIELD, which Peggy and Howard had helped found, knew that this one particular extraterrestrial asshole was not to be trusted.

Space! Aliens! Steve’s head was spinning, and he was fairly sure that there was worse to come. There always had been, the last while.

Howard’s son was the image of him, but older than Steve remembered Howard being. That was… Something. And he’d been handed other files, too. About Jim and Gabe and Monty and Frenchie and Dum Dum. He hadn’t been able to look past the first page of any of them. Aliens were one thing, but having a whole bunch of graves to visit was another altogether.

“Walk me through this,” he said to Fury. “You’ve had aliens before.”

“There’ve been others that we didn’t handle,” Fury said. “Down near Metropolis. One of their own got that under control, after half the city was smashed up. Goes by  _ Superman.” _

Steve very firmly did not want to know.

“The main thing you need to worry about is the Tesseract,” Fury said, “and leave most of the aliens up to us.”

Somehow, he didn’t see that panning out as neatly as everyone obviously hoped. He still got suited and booted (it was worse than his stage uniform, Christ) and ready for action, because what else was he supposed to do? Seemed like the war had never ended, even though everyone he met kept telling him they’d won.

 

* * *

Diana is in Paris once more, after they’ve saved the world and Clark is returned to them. Bruce has sent her a set of Lalique combs for her hair, with a note about wearing them as her crown when she needs to be covert. 

She should be in New York, probably, but she is a coward afraid of disappointment, and so instead she is smiling to herself over a cup of coffee when a very large, very blonde man is shown into her office.

He is not just a man. Like calls to like, and there is something of Diana herself in this not-a-man.

“I met an Amazon many years ago,” he says by way of introduction. “Her name was Atlanta. She was taller than you, and much fiercer.”

Diana smiles.

“I can be fierce,” she assures him. He smiles, and- ah. She has him now. “It has been a very long time since I heard word of an Asgardian, though. There was talk, after the incident in New York, but…”

“But you could not be sure what to believe,” he says, still smiling. “I am Thor, son of Odin, son of Frigga. And you?”

“Diana, daughter of Hippolyta, daughter of Zeus,” she offers in return, truth for truth. “What brings you all the way to Paris, Odinsson?”

He reaches into the inside pocket of his beautiful jacket, and removes a photograph. This he hands to Diana before stepping back a little, as if for fear of her reaction.

In the photo, Thor Odinsson is laughing, which she suspects is not unusual. 

Beside him, also laughing, leaning on his shoulder just the way his father used, is Steve Rogers. 

“Oh,” she says.

“He carries a shield, too,” Thor says. “Although he wields it rather differently than you do, Princess.”

 

**VII.**

 

Steve answers the door to Thor’s characteristic too-loud too-long knock with a tired smile - he was on an op with Nat for the past three days, and could do with maybe six hours uninterrupted sleep, but he never really minds Thor’s company.

Except this obviously isn’t a social call. Thor isn’t wearing sweatpants, and he isn’t carrying six pizzas in one hand and half a supermarket of candy in the other. He’s dressed really nicely, and there’s a tall, slim woman with dark hair and huge eyes standing at his elbow.

“I thought you were lost,” she says, pressing her hand to her heart. She’s wearing deep metal bracelets, and something about her seems familiar, but Steve can’t figure out where from. “I am so, so sorry.”

“I- thank you?” he hazards, because he has no idea why a stranger would be sorry for losing him. 

“Steve,” Thor says, “might the Princess and I come in?”

Steve steps back, because Thor never asks outright like that and he’s never had a  _ Princess  _ to visit, and finds that his apartment feels small now that there’s an unexpected person following Thor into his front room.

She looks like a woman from one of the files Fury gave him, about the other aliens SHIELD hadn’t dealt with. Is she that woman? How does Thor know her?

“My name is Diana,” she says, once they’re settled on the couch and he’s provided tea and ice water. “And I- I believe that I might be- that is, I don’t know what you were told-”

“She is your mother,” Thor cuts in, “and likely the reason you survived your ordeal under the sea.”

“Um,” Steve says intelligently. “I mean, I know I was adopted, ma never hid that from me, but how can you be my mother if you’re still, well, you know. Young?”

“Well,” Diana says, with a slow, uncertain smile that Steve kind of recognises from the mirror, if he’s being honest. “How good is your Greek mythology?”


End file.
